And we had to wait only as long a cigarette lasts. Pekka recognized the man straight away and when he saw him walking out of the entrance, he pushed me a bit back and he decided to follow him. I don’t know what got to him, I would have stopped him straight away but I suppose curiosity won even me and my logic. And he continued walking for a time, not looking left or right and without showing any sign that he had any idea that we were less than twenty meters behind him.

Pekka was quiet but I kept going without saying anything, he seemed so deep in his thoughts and so focus at the man walking in front of us that the rest of the world seemed to have vanished around him including me. Hundreds of thoughts kept crossing my mind and small doubts started bringing other possibilities but every single time I was finishing with the same scenario. It made more sense didn’t matter which ay you looked at it.

The man continued walking fast with determination without looking left or right and the couple of times he met somebody his aura had pushed them away from him. I started wandering where he was going so fast when for the first time I looked around me and I felt the first sign of uneasiness.

Everybody who knows me knows one of my characteristics. One handicap that has been proved painful a lot of times in my life sometimes driving me in very bad adventures. I have no sense of direction, I cannot read maps and it is very rare for me to sense where I am and find my way. What helps me and I suppose nature gave it to me to balance my handicap is my photographic memory. So I always ‘photograph’ my surroundings, the ways I’m following, streets or anything else I can as a defence mechanism so I can later find my way.

This handicap has been the reason I have spend two days and nights in a cell in a very weird eastern country and it all started with me losing my way – while playing the tourist with a gigantic camera – crossing the borders without anybody see me and end up in a forbidden region and questioned as a spy. It might sounds funny when you read and you might smile with the unbelievable adventure but I insure you that my memories about the event include nothing happy and not forget that I lost a very expensive camera and a lot of fantastic films from the wider area. And this was just an example, my latest success was the day I got lost in a mall and I had to call Marc to help me find my way out!

The rest happened too fast, in the speed of light, faster than the time I needed just now to recall all the event. The same time I realized where I was three things happened exactly the same time. The older man increased his speed in nearly running and the same time something shining came out of his coat. Pekka left my right side and he started running and the same time Alexei appeared from the entrance of a gray building. We had come all the way to Alexei’s house. I felt numb and I just stopped there watching everything unveiling in front of me in the speed of a film.

Pekka jumped in the back of the old man in a dispirit move just before the man push his right hand with the shining object in Alexei who was standing watching the same numb with me. And then all of them rolled there in the pavement. That was the minute I started running and screaming. When I got there everything was over. Pekka had the man on the ground with his arms in the back; hands held together pulling out something plastic from his pocket and Alexei looked totally lost trying to find the power to stand up. On the pavement there was a thick meat knife. People had stopped all around watching us and Pekka screamed with a loud voice “police!”

**************************************

Leena was drinking her herbal tea in front of me and my cappuccino. My cigarette had to wait for a few minutes till I go outside for a smoke. I had told her everything including the fact that the man didn’t say anything but the police got everything they needed from the mother, including clothes that after an examination in the lab proved to carry Ferrah’s blood.

Alexei had moved back to St. Petersburg with Ferah’s sister following him. Nobody could say if she really loved him, Ivan, my gas station friend was saying that she didn’t, but she had to get out of here and the further away the better. The mother and the grandmother remained here learning visiting hours since the father was going to spent at least the next twenty five years under the hospitality of the Finnish prisons. The same family values that killed the daughter were keeping the mother next to the murderer father.

Leena was still quiet and somehow I knew what she was thinking. These two open eyes from the photograph and the beauty of the Kurdish girl were going to hunt us for ever. What Leena didn’t know was that in a month I was moving and Helsinginkatu was not going to be my base anymore!